Could your job be making you obese?

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/e-cyj102815.php

Public Release: 28-Oct-2015
Could your job be making you obese?
Research reveals link between having to make lots of decisions at work and increased BMI
Elsevier

Your job could be having an effect on your waistline, suggests new research published in Social Science & Medicine - and it could be bad or good news depending on the sort of control you have over your work.

The new study, by researchers at the University of Adelaide, Central Queensland University and the University of South Australia, shows that having skills and the freedom to use them at work is linked to lower BMI and smaller waist size, whereas needing to make a lot of decisions is linked to bigger waist size.

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Control in your job can come in two broad forms: skill discretion - having and being able to apply skills - and decision authority. Traditionally, increasing an employee's level of job control has been seen as a good thing and the two factors have been considered together when looking at their effect on people's health. However, the new study suggests that the two aspects of job control should be considered separately in terms of their effects on health, and obesity in particular.

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"Many people point to 'eating too much and not moving enough' as the cause of obesity," said lead author Mr. Christopher Bean, a health psychology PhD candidate from the University of Adelaide. "While this might explain how weight gain often happens, it does not acknowledge things such as environmental, psychological, social or cultural factors - these are some of the important why reasons that obesity happens."

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Traditionally, high job demands are considered stressful, while high job control has been considered useful in mitigating the effects of high demands. However, skill discretion and decision authority are usually assessed together. In the new study, the team took these two factors separately. After controlling for sex, age, household income, work hours and job nature, these two factors were comparatively strongly associated with obesity, with surprisingly opposite effects.

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